Agence France-Presse, The U.S. and Poland began formal talks in Warsaw on May 24 on Washington’s contested plan to base part of a missile defense system in this central European country.
A spokesman at the U.S. Embassy said the talks opened shortly before 9:30 a.m.
John Rood, assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation is leading the U.S. negotiating team, which is made up of 11 other U.S. government officials.
The talks in Warsaw opened a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin said during a visit to Austria that he feared the U.S. plan to extend the missile defense system into Poland and the Czech Republic could launch a new arms race.
“What has happened in Europe that is so negative that one should need to fill central Europe with arms?” Putin asked at a joint press conference in Vienna with Austrian President Heinz Fischer.
“It will lead to nothing else than a new arms race and we find this completely counterproductive,” he said.
The U.S. negotiators had traveled to Warsaw from Prague, where they held talks on the plan to base the missile defense system’s powerful tracking radar in the Czech Republic.
Ten interceptor missiles would be based in Poland, extending the defensive system, which is already partly deployed in the U.S., Britain and Greenland, into Russia’s backyard.
U.S. officials stress that the system would be used to thwart potential airborne attacks from the Middle East — particularly Iran — and that it poses no threat to Russia.
But Moscow has maintained its staunch opposition.
Public opinion in the Czech Republic and Poland is broadly against the radar and missiles being based on their territory.
